Norway’s Ministry of Finance has set up a new expert council for the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, the Government Pension Fund Global.
The expert council — comprised of three economics experts — will provide advice and assessments to the ministry on the fund’s investment strategy, the framework for responsible management and follow-ups by central bank Norges Bank. The Oslo-based 18.71 trillion Norwegian kroner ($1.75 trillion) wealth fund is managed by Norges Bank Investment Management.
“One of the success factors in the management of the pension fund has been to build on thorough professional studies,” Minister of Finance Jens Stoltenberg said in a translation of a news release on the ministry’s website. “I am pleased that we have now put in place an expert council with professional weight that can assist the ministry in important questions about how the fund should be managed in the future.”
In addition to the basic mandate, the expert council may be assigned annual, more detailed tasks. The council will be expected to submit a brief report to the Ministry of Finance and arrange an open seminar to present assessments as a general rule, the release said.
For 2025, the expert council will be tasked with assessing the basis for the investment strategy and proposing a framework for systematic reviews of important policy choices, the release added. The council will also have a role in reviewing NBIM’s active management of the fund, which is set to take place in 2025.
The expert council is chaired by Karen Helene Ulltveit-Moe, a professor of economics at the University of Oslo. She is also a former member of Norges Bank’s executive board and “has good knowledge of the management of the fund,” the release said.
Also on the committee are Harald Magnus Andreassen, chief economist at investment bank SpareBank 1 Markets, who has experience in macroeconomic issues, particularly stock and bond markets; and Magnus Dahlquist, professor of finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, who was a member of the Ministry of Finance’s expert group that assessed NBIM’s active management of the fund in 2018.
